(HVAC = Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning)
The house is very efficient and doesn’t require a lot of heating in winter. It has a two-stage gas furnace that is about ten years old; when I bought it to replace the earlier unit, I chose a better-than-entry-level unit that is high efficiency, etc.
I’ve also added thermal blinds to the large windows in the living area so as to cut down on heat loss in the winter.
In the summer, the large area of windows that makes the house so lovely and open and light and airy can let a lot of sun in and heat the place up. Particularly on the top level, it gets quite hot.
So I had a heavy duty industrial type a/c system installed. It has a main unit outside, and then coolant pipes to an exchanger upstairs, and huge “silent” registers in the ceiling directing air into the master bedroom on the top level and the main living spaces in the main level. The lower level has no a/c, but doesn’t really need it – it doesn’t get as hot (hot air rises, etc).
The house gets regular city-supply water from Redmond. It is great water, there’s no need to filter it or anything, unless you want to. It has reasonably good pressure all over. The water heater, which I replaced maybe five years ago, is a high-efficiency gas heated cistern.
The back lawn had sprinklers in it, but I never used them and over the years they’ve “disappeared”. The main taps for them are still visible I think, but I’ve never really needed to use them and it might be more bother than it is worth to try and resurrect them.
One more thing. I’ve installed an external security camera (and an internal one too). I’d be happy to leave those if you wished. They can be accessed through the internet, take pictures when movement is detected, and all the usual sort of stuff. But the largest element of “home security”, should it be needed, is provided by the family dog. 🙂